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Juan Gabriel Vasquezbooks include the 2014 International IMPAC Dublin award winner and national bestseller, The Sound of Things Falling, as well as the award-winning The Informers and The Secret History of Costaguana.

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Rage Is Back

A Novel

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Overview

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Go the F*** to Sleep, “a rollicking, frenetic and hilarious jaunt” (San Francisco Chronicle)

Raised in the shadow of two graffiti legends from New York’s “golden era” of subway bombing, Dondi Vance is less than thrilled to learn his father, Billy Rage, is back after sixteen years on the lam. But the transit cop who ruined Billy’s life and shattered his crew is running for mayor—and must be brought down. Welcome to the Great American Graffiti Novel.

Praise

“Mansbach has clearly had a play date with Michael Chabon and Junot Diaz, and his fresh, witty novel is one that hip readers will relish . . . Laced with zaniness and cultural bling.”—Ron Charles, Washington Post

“A rollicking, frenetic and hilarious jaunt through the (literal and figurative) New York City underworld . . . [that] does for graffiti what Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay did for comic books . . . [Rage is Back] mashes up disparate linguistic registers with an effortlessness that brings to mind Junot Diaz’s perennial narrator, Junior . . . Beneath all the weed and spray paint, it’s a warmhearted story about a son searching for his father and for himself, a trip through the past and present of an American art form.”—David Lukas, San Francisco Chronicle

“Mansbach’s wild ride will likely earn cult-classic status — and deservedly so . . . In Dondi, Mansbach has created an unforgettable narrator who combines elements of Holden Caulfield, Oscar Wao, and even a hint of Ignatius J. Reilly.”—Eric Liebetrau, Boston Globe

“Flashing bits of brilliance like a beautifully burned train . . . Mansbach can write with real talent, maybe crazy talent.”—Kevin Baker, The New York Times Book Review

“A hilarious revenge thriller. . . [that reads] something like watching a Quentin Tarantino film or listening to a Wu-Tang Clan album—perhaps simultaneously. This is a great thing. … Rage Is Back has humor and horror and humanity and is altogether fresh.”—Kevin Coval, Chicago Tribune

“Exuberant . . . Mansbach’s paean to graffiti art . . . has a wild-style collage form that also ties in plot points involving a hallucinogenic vision-quest, the so-called ‘mole people’ said to live in the city’s tunnels, and time travel.”—The Wall Street Journal

“A muscular ode to New York City’s 1980s art underground . . . Combines a poet’s touch with the wild sparks of a subway train speeding through a graffiti-splashed tunnel.”—Elle Magazine

“Rage Is Back is a funny, macho-but-vulnerable coming-of-age-story. It’s seeped in New York nostalgia and narrated in bright and vulgar prose that succeeds in hinting at no small quantity of swagger and soul. As Dondi says, ‘it’s not easy to talk from your heart and out your ass at the same time.’ Delightfully, Rage Is Back manages to do both.”—Daily Beast

“It’s the great American graffiti novel. The golden era of New York hip-hop and graffiti lives—on the shelves of bookstores.”—Brooklyn Paper

“Two years after a joke propelled him to the bestseller list, the Berkeley author proves he belongs there with his excellent new “Great American Graffiti Novel”. Rage uses graffiti as less a setting than a central character in and of itself: Mansbach loves the form too deeply to grant it anything less, loves it so much his writing reads like graffiti looks — big, colorful, dense, often profane, occasionally impenetrable. But, like any great (or Great) novel — like Sleep, even — Rage is also vastly bigger and deeper and more valuable than the sum of its (many, moving) parts: not quite easy, but not quite meant to be.”—East Bay Express

“With its hyper-verbal view into the hip-hop culture near to the author’s heart, Rage Is Back is masterfully verbose.”—Boston Phoenix

“It makes sense that Mansbach would write a novel that intertwines graffiti artists with a story about family. It makes sense because hip-hop culture, race, and family are three of the overarching themes in all of his work. What is evident as soon as you start reading Rage Is Back is that Mansbach is one of the few writers capable of taking those subjects and writing something that comes off as organic and fun to read. Like Lethem’s Fortress of Solitude, Mansbach’s latest has bright flourishes of urban magical realism. And also like Lethem’s book, you can clearly hear the characters’ voices as you read through Rage Is Back…. you find yourself finishing the book and realizing Rage Is Back is totally not what you expected, and that’s one of the things that make the book so wonderful to read.”—Flavorwire

“Gels in a most satisfying way as fractured relationships are mended and old friends hatch — and splendidly execute — a plan to exact careful revenge on the man who long ago split them apart. Read it on the B train.” —Daily Candy

“Unfolding like a fever dream of an impossible return to graffiti-era New York, Mansbach’s Rage Is Back delivers a mind-bending journey through a subterranean world of epic heroes and villains, and is already being called “the great American graffiti novel.” A must-read for the literate hip-hop head.”—OkayPlayer

“Through gripping prose, Adam Mansbach puts the reader in the thick of the graffiti underground.”—AM New York

Praise for Go The F**k To Sleep:

“Total genius.”—Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn, father of two

“A children’s book for grown-ups! I really did laugh out loud—hilarious!”—David Byrne, musician, father of one

Praise for The End of the Jews:

“A beautiful, funny, heartbreaking book that manages to take on art, love, identity, class anxiety, being Jewish, and wishing you were black. Very few writers could have attempted all this without farcical results. Adam Mansbach succeeds, brilliantly. The End of the Jews is an intense, painful, poignant book.”-The Boston Globe

“Smart and cynical.”-The New York Times

“Mansbach has made something new of the multigenerational Jewish epic; this is far more tough-minded reading than we are used to on the subject. I don’t love Jews any less for it, and neither does Mansbach, but I do know us better for what we are. This is a heartfelt, truthful book.”—Keith Gessen, author of All the Sad Young Literary Men

“Startling, subversive, and raucous, Angry Black White Boy is a novel about how we became who we are, and why that’s not good enough.”—Daniel Alarcón, author of War by Candlelight

“With this brutal, hilarious, and tragic novel, Adam Mansbach proves once again he is one of the most ambitious, insightful, and daring writers of our generation.”—Jeff Chang, author of Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation

“Angry Black White Boy is full of hilariously twisted racial politics. Adam Mansbach is like a wigger Ishmael Reed running wild through the world of hip hop.”—Touré, author of Soul City